Often Over Me And Round And Round And Round

Artist: Loren ErdrichOften Over Me And Round And Round And Round, 2016Raw organic pigments and watercolor on paper11.75" x 9.75" "A friend went to Morocco and bought me unmarked vials of raw organic pigments. The names she remembered intrigued me: lapis, turmeric, certain flowers, crushed snails, saffron, cobalt. They brought to mind a preciousness I felt lacking, in substance and in material. I played scientist - painstakingly experimenting with each pigment to find the proper binder to create stable watercolors. Still, I sometimes I wet my paper and brushed the powered pigment straight onto the surface. The normal push and pull between control and mayhem, common in wet-on-wet technique, became magnified. The pigments seemed to shoot through the water and over the page as the water destroyed the rigidity of the paper, modifying and destabilizing any boundary it encountered. The result was lusciously unpredictable. As I maneuver these pools of pigment and water into recognizable forms,